


on the clear understanding that this kind of thing can happen

by strikinglight



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Dancing, Developing Relationship, M/M, Multimedia, Pre-Series, phichit falls a lot in more ways than one, some risk of injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight
Summary: Every skater worth their salt has some kind of brush with ballet over the course of their career, but Phichit’s willing to bet money that only Yuuri Katsuki regularly uses the couch in his living room as a barre. Or stands by default in first position, or does little pirouettes across the floor while setting the breakfast table.
Or: Yuuri and Phichit spend the off-season dancing.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [entremelement](https://archiveofourown.org/users/entremelement/gifts).



> For [Moon](http://entremelement.tumblr.com), who did a terrible thing by introducing me to "Versace on the Floor."
> 
> Title from (lol) "Shall We Dance," from _The King and I_. Song titles click through to YouTube for maximum Atmosphere(TM).
> 
> Tbh all I want for Christmas is for Phichit and Yuuri to do "Can I Have This Dance" from HSM3.

[ **1\. Shy That Way – Tristan Prettyman feat. Jason Mraz** ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-HUHacYf0A)

 

When Yuuri listens to music, he listens with his whole body.

Curiously, it’s one of those things Phichit thinks he might have always known, but needed to see up close to become aware of. He watches Yuuri with as much attention as he watches anyone—possibly more, the better to learn how to live with him—and he’s noticed from the first how Yuuri’s movements off the ice are charged with a kind of restlessness. He’s quiet but never still, always changing his weight from foot to foot, fidgeting, fiddling with his hands.

So it’s especially interesting, what happens when there’s music on. They’re in the kitchen doing the dishes one evening when Phichit finally hits upon it. Phichit’s phone is on the far side of the counter with his studying playlist on shuffle, and it’s as though Yuuri can’t help _but_ move to it—even in small ways, drumming his fingers or bobbing his head, swaying a little, humming along to songs he might not even know.

“You like dancing, don’t you?”

There’s a sponge in Yuuri’s right hand and a ring of soap suds around his wrist, and Phichit can swear that he can see a rhythm even to the way he washes and rinses the plates. Sliding circular motions, clockwise, counterclockwise. But the question catches Yuuri off-guard enough to freeze him for a few seconds, make him stutter his way around an answer.

“Y-y-you say that like we don’t dance all the time.”

“No, but you _like_ dancing,” Phichit repeats. He takes the plate Yuuri’s been working on and starts to dry it following the same pattern; small circles, big circles, clockwise, counterclockwise. “Off the ice. You find it fun.”

Yuuri’s not looking at him, staring down into the sink instead. His ears are red, but he’s still tapping one foot; Phichit can see it out of the corner of his eye. “M-maybe.”

He can’t help but raise an eyebrow. _Really, Yuuri? Really?_

For a second Yuuri looks like he’s going to say more, protest further. Instead he laughs and raises his left hand to flick water in Phichit’s face, and even as the droplets make contact with his cheeks Phichit doesn’t miss how the snap of Yuuri’s wrist, too, has its own cadence.

 

* * *

 

**[2\. Début – Mélanie Laurent](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scgKP0rNTW0) **

 

Every skater worth their salt has some kind of brush with ballet over the course of their career, but Phichit’s willing to bet money that only Yuuri Katsuki regularly uses the couch in his living room as a barre. Or stands by default in first position, or does little pirouettes across the floor while setting the breakfast table.

Phichit can only guess at what kind of place he goes to in his imagination when he does this, watching half hidden behind their bedroom door. The only thing he’s certain of is that no one can follow Yuuri there. Wherever he goes, he’s gotten accustomed to going alone. Which is to say that Phichit in his turn needs to pay careful attention to the exact moment he pushes the door open a little further and lets the soft creaking noise it makes across the floor announce his presence. The first and last time he’d surprised Yuuri in the middle of his morning warm-up he’d fallen straight out of his arabesque, and taken their curtains with him.

It’s not, he thinks, so much about perfect form as it is about bringing the dance into everything, and about turning everything—or nearly—into a dance. It makes perfect sense when he learns that for Yuuri ballet had come into his life even before skating, and that it had been his teacher who’d encouraged him to go down that particular road.

“You were probably top of that class,” Phichit remarks, halfway through peeling an orange. His eyes track the path of Yuuri’s hand through the air—the curl of his fingers around the pitcher’s handle, the delicate arc of bone where it joins his wrist.

“I _was_ the class,” Yuuri answers, chuckling. His arm dips to pour water into Phichit’s glass, light, modest in its grace. “Back then I couldn’t dance with anybody else around.”

 

* * *

 

**[3\. Versace on the Floor – Bruno Mars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2UZlwTDGbY) **

 

It feels slightly providential when Celestino hands Phichit a set of pole class coupons—fifty percent off for eight sessions—and tells him he and Yuuri might consider it, for strength training. Phichit decides he’s not going to ask questions—is Celestino trying to tell him something? or does he just need someone to take them off his hands? and how _did_ he get his hands on them in the first place?—and applies his energies toward sweet-talking Yuuri into going with him instead.

Initial reservations aside, Yuuri agrees after the first two sessions that it’s useful. It takes two more for him to admit he finds it fun. His only qualms, as Phichit finds he’d been expecting, have to do with internalizing. Affecting the required disposition. To put it more straightforwardly, being sexy. It isn’t a hard and fast requirement to be able to pole per se, but Phichit knows that for Yuuri anything worth doing is worth doing well (read: perfectly). Each time their instructor tells them more and more emphatically that they need to _feel_ the music, there’s no doubt that he’ll take it to heart if he can’t.

Phichit wants to tell him it’s hard to project sexy when you’re hanging upside down by your knees and need to slide gracefully to the ground in a way that’s evocative of a silk dress being unzipped and discarded. Not that he’s unzipped many dresses in his lifetime, but privately Phichit laughs at the place zippers seem to have in popular romantic fantasy. There’s always that part near the top that gets stuck, and then—

Yuuri slides down into his field of view the next pole over, all locked joints and an expression that’s not intense in quite the right way—more vaguely constipated than either aroused or arousing. But then again this is Yuuri, whose significant experiences of disrobing and being disrobed are of him getting his head stuck in the collars of his own sweaters during the scramble before morning practice, and of Phichit having to come over and straighten him out.

When Yuuri mutters “I don’t think I’m doing this right,” just loudly enough to be heard over _Take it off for me, for me, for me, for me now, girl,_ Phichit’s first impulse is to tell him you don’t have to be perfect to be _perfect._

Inconveniently—conveniently?—that’s the moment his concentration slips and his knees follow soon after, and he drops the last few inches down the pole. His reflexes kick in just fast enough to angle himself so his shoulders take most of the impact, but later he won’t be sure at all he didn’t actually smash his skull against the floor, because his next memories will be of Yuuri veritably _backflipping_ off the pole to land next to him. After that, Yuuri’s hands on his face, nervous tremors running through every bone as they cradle the back of his head.

“Oh my god, Phichit, oh my _god,_ are you okay? You can get concussions from whiplash, _Phichit,_ _oh my god.”_

The instructor has Yuuri pick him up and take him to the locker room to walk it off. Of course Yuuri uses it as an opportunity to test for brain damage, peering into his eyes to check that his pupils haven’t dilated irregularly, asking him all the questions. What’s his name, what year is it, what’s their unit number. Concussions are an occupational hazard for figure skaters, so it stands to reason that he’s read all about them on WebMD.

“You know,” Phichit says, one arm around Yuuri’s shoulders, a little embarrassed at how fond he sounds, “you’re better at pole than you think. Maybe you’ll thank me for the lessons one day.”

“I can’t thank you for anything if you’re dead,” Yuuri snaps, and pulls at his waist when he tries to stand on his own.

 

* * *

 

**[4\. Shall We Skate? – Taku Matsushiba feat. The Soulmatics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PYwj2QGQqA) **

 

One AM, and they’re watching each other from opposite sides of the living room, eyes fixed on each other’s faces as they cross the floor with small sliding steps. When they meet in the center they bow, bending deeply forward in perfect synchrony. Then they rise together, hands opening out toward each other until they meet and touch, and that’s when they begin.

The story of this moment—as they both well know by now, courtesy of the well-loved, banged-up DVD enthroned in the center of their coffee table—is that the prince asks the skater to teach him because he knows it’s possible to take the ice as a pair. When they play pretend off the ice it becomes a waltz, but they’ve done this enough times to trust each other with the required improvisations. Crooked smiles, socked feet, bedsheets strategically draped and tucked to serve as royal regalia. Approach, bow— _Take my hands, your Majesty._ Then Yuuri takes them through the paces with the same painstaking precision and care that Phichit finds suffuses everything he does; one-two-three, one-two-three, turn, dip, one-two-three, making spirals.

The song crests—one-two- _lift,_ Yuuri’s hands on either side of Phichit’s waist, and it’s through no fault of his own that his elbows buckle and give, then they’re crashing down in a tangle of arms and legs and sheet, tying themselves all up in knots on the floor.

It’s over too soon, but also it hasn’t ended. They know how to perform, even without an audience, even like this—the dance disrupted, their rhythm broken. The song continues; the panicked yells give way to laughter, because they know how to fall, too.

“So I guess neither of us are switching to doubles anytime soon.” Phichit’s first to find a second wind, but Yuuri isn’t far behind.

“Maybe we should stop doing this dancing thing,” Yuuri says in a breath, grinning up at him from where he’s splayed prone on a carpet that had been the surface of a lake frozen by magic not two minutes ago. “I almost killed you.”

“Well, to be fair, this time _I_ almost killed _you_.” Phichit laughs, braces his hands against the floor on either side of Yuuri’s head, and pushes himself up.

 

* * *

 

**[5\. Good Thing – Sage the Gemini feat. Nick Jonas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqIoVb9zLVg) **

 

It’s taken exactly one year of fire-forged roommateship to convince Yuuri to go to a club with him, but even here there’s a delicate balance to the way they do things that Phichit knows well enough to respect. A club, but a smallish one midtown, where they’re unlikely to bump into any acquaintances from school or the rink. A little table some distance from the dance floor. No more than three beers each. Something in Phichit stands at attention, coiled like a wire, ready at any moment to straighten up and say _Let’s go home_.

The last thing he expects is for Yuuri to settle into the music—he’s been worrying in the back of his mind all night about the way Yuuri might take the noise, the crowd—but something relaxes him, some magic that makes his head nod along to the heavy bass beats, spreads all the way down to his fingertips. Now they stand side by side, elbows on the table and heads together, drinking and yelling at each other, grinning and shaking their heads when they realize just what a superhuman effort it is to talk when they can barely hear themselves think.

“Why—” The noise around them swallows up Yuuri’s voice so completely Phichit needs to watch his lips to translate: _Why do you—_ He stops and smiles, sheepish, his face in deep shadow except where the shifting lights cut across it in too many colors. Yuuri’s eyes are shards of glass. Yuuri’s smile is a vein of silver. Phichit decides there’s nothing in the room now that can wrest his attention from that smile. _Why do you like it here so much?_

Phichit leans in closer—noses nearly bumping, foreheads just shy of knocking together—and shoots for it, shouts another question because it would take too long to explain. “You wanna dance?”

“I don’t know how to do this,” Yuuri yells back, and they laugh. “It’s not really dancing.”

Phichit can concede that it might not look like much from where they stand. The dark floor, the press of bodies. No technical elements or steps or choreography, just music so loud and so wild you don’t so much listen to it as feel it wrap around you and rattle your bones.

“You just move.” He doesn’t know if Yuuri will let him take his hand, so he extends his own instead, palm upturned and waiting. “It’s easy, I swear.”

They’re not drunk. Neither of them are, even a little, but all the blood in Phichit’s body still rushes to his head when Yuuri reaches out and takes the hand he’s offering.

 

* * *

 

**[6\. Love Me Tender – Norah Jones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYV2yy6s9zM) **

 

In the evenings, they do their dishes inside a song.

“Want to dance?”

They’ve switched places since the first time they ever talked about dancing, Phichit washing now, Yuuri drying. And this time it’s Yuuri asking the questions that disarm, those three words in too-smooth counterpoint to the music from the phone, the sound of water petering out as Phichit reaches for the knob, bewildered.

“Now?” he asks. His hands are wet, his fingertips ridged and wrinkled from washing, but they’re already saying yes—reaching out toward Yuuri’s open palms before his mind can catch up.

“Sure.” Without hesitation Yuuri brings them into position, his right hand in Phichit’s left, his left at Phichit’s hip, Phichit’s right at his shoulder. The taller partner leads; it’s just the way things are, but Phichit swears he’s not imagining some kind of twinkle in Yuuri’s eye, some spark of mischief. And it’s a complete mystery how a face he’s never seen Yuuri wear before becomes him so much. “Seems like it’s always a good time to dance, with you.”

They’ve washed dishes in this kitchen almost every night for a year, slowly gotten the hang of the groceries and the utility bill and the rhythm of living together, but Phichit finds that in many ways Yuuri Katsuki is no less puzzling than he ever was.

“I guess.” What else is there to say, really? A new song starts, and they begin to move. “This isn’t really dancing either, though.”

It isn’t. Neither of them need to say what a relief that is. They save the real dancing for the ice, and that is performance in the true sense, the kind that takes you out of yourself so completely it’s a miracle you can find your way back. To dance always under the eyes of the world has made them strong, each in his own way, but here they stand face to face. Here there’s no one to put on a show for, just four walls and one song and two pairs of feet across the same tiled rectangle of floor.

“It’s easy,” Yuuri says, archly, laughing when Phichit’s fist connects with his shoulder. They don’t break rhythm even then, not once. “Why, did you want something more complicated?”

If you get lost in thought while skating, you can fall. There’s no such risk of injury in their kitchen, at the very least, even in such close proximity to so many breakables. Which is to say he knows there’s no sense in making things needlessly difficult—not when it can be as simple as this, as the two of them letting their bodies do what they know.

“I’ll follow your lead,” Phichit says.


End file.
